The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: DC Comics

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 377: MAYOOR

    (More Fun Comics 064, 1941)

    Mayoor is an ancient evil god with no in-comic-defined portfolio but if I had guess I would venture that he’s the God of Disappointment. Here’s the sum total of his plots and plans: enthrall a society adventurer named Bill Credon, who then lure Dr Fate chum Inza Cramer to Mayoor’s Yucatan Peninsula temple-cum-prison. Then there’s a bit about using her to spread Mayoor’s message and worship but unfortunately for Mayoor that’s the point at which Dr Fate shows up and kills him.

    It’s not even a challenge! And Mayoor should have known that he was outclassed, because Dr Fate* is the one who imprisoned him in the first place. About the only good thing about this guy is that because he was such a nothing villain he could probably be BRUNG BACK as a regional threat without a lot of baggage, just bedeviling the heroes of Central America for decades – it’s not as if there were any piece of fiction in which it was easy to kill a god, after all. Worldbuilding!

    *this story is a few issues prior to the Dr Fate’s origin story, so while retroactively it was probably Nabu or someone else wearing the Helmet of Fate who imprisoned Mayoor, in-story it’s still Dr Fate being treated as an immortal wizard.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 376: THE SHADOW

    (More Fun Comics 064, 1941)

    The Shadow is in reality the vengeful ghost of Elmer Watson, a bumped-off witness in a big corruption case. Slightly more reasonable reason for revenge than some murderous ghosts, certainly, but Watson’s vengeance eventually becomes so all-consuming that he attempts to derail an entire passenger train to get at one target and he ends up banished to whatever nether realm the Spectre sends bad ghosts to.

    This is two Vengeance Ghosts in a row for the Spectre! Is that all he is going to face now? No, I checked, it’s not. Close call though!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 375: HALDANE THE SORCERER

    (More Fun Comics 063, 1941)

    Haldane the Sorcerer has no backstory in-comic, so I’m going to be making some assumptions here. Assumption Number 1: since he first comes to light at society party that is also attended by Dr Fate pal Inza Cramer I am going to assume that he is part of the same New York/ New England social set as her, as opposed to some sort of party crasher. 

    Assumption Number 2: Haldane is a hobbyist. He is a rich guy who has managed to buy his way into learning, artifacts and power. He obviously has the magic skills to, for instance, turn someone to stone or rig up a voodoo doll to kill them in three days, but he lacks all sense of the practical. As an example: why the heck does he deploy his scheme in the middle of a party attended by none other than Dr Fate’s main squeeze? Because he’s never done anything like this before.

    Let me elaborate on his scheme to underline my point: Haldane is after the hidden treasure of the Jeromes, hidden deep in secret passages below their manor and thought by all to be a mere legend. He has discovered the location of the treasure via scrying. All of his spells seem to be status effect curses – surely the best way to go about things would be to sneak in, maybe curse someone to send them to the hospital? Not running into the middle of a party throwing curses left and right – amateur move.

    To cap it all off, when things start going off the rails Haldane decides to summon a cosmic horror (that, yes, looks a lot like a big bald lug). It’s a wild overreaction that doesn’t even solve his problems – it just scares that poor lady!

    Anyway, Dr Fate socks him one and he flies into the sea. An ignominious end for a mighty sorcerer.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 374: THE MAN WHO WAS DEAD

    (More Fun Comics 063, 1941)

    I’m just as guilty as I was with the Jungle Scientist of being immediately seduced by the subject’s name as presented in the title of the story. The Man Who Was Dead – a terrific name if I’ve ever seen one. Pure bonus points to the guy for being a weird little imp about it.

    The Man Who Was Dead of course escapes from police custody and so the Radio Squad here are forced to follow up on their only clue: a cufflink with some weird writing on it which they of course take to a university History Department and of course discover that the Man Who Was Dead is in fact History Professor Greene, who recently had a nervous breakdown. Also there is a sinister Indian gentleman named Professor Silna.

    It all comes to a head in an abandoned house on the edge of town, in which Silna is of course revealed to have drugged and hypnotized Greene into an obedient and invulnerable servant using his Ancient Hindu Magicks. Silna realizes too late that he should have made himself immune to gunfire as well, as he is gunned down by Radio Squad member Sandy Kean. Greene gets to heal from the tremendous amount of abuse his body endured while under Silna’s control and all the loot gets returned – a happy ending for all!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 374: THE MAN WHO WAS DEAD

    (More Fun Comics 063, 1941)

    I’m just as guilty as I was with the Jungle Scientist of being immediately seduced by the subject’s name as presented in the title of the story. The Man Who Was Dead – a terrific name if I’ve ever seen one. Pure bonus points to the guy for being a weird little imp about it.

    The Man Who Was Dead of course escapes from police custody and so the Radio Squad here are forced to follow up on their only clue: a cufflink with some weird writing on it which they of course take to a university History Department and of course discover that the Man Who Was Dead is in fact History Professor Greene, who recently had a nervous breakdown. Also there is a sinister Indian gentleman named Professor Silna.

    It all comes to a head in an abandoned house on the edge of town, in which Silna is of course revealed to have drugged and hypnotized Greene into an obedient and invulnerable servant using his Ancient Hindu Magicks. Silna realizes too late that he should have made himself immune to gunfire as well, as he is gunned down by Radio Squad member Sandy Kean. Greene gets to heal from the tremendous amount of abuse his body endured while under Silna’s control and all the loot gets returned – a happy ending for all!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 373: THE JUNGLE SCIENTIST

    (More Fun Comics 063, 1941)

    I won’t lie to you: this initial panel really did all the work in guaranteeing the Jungle Scientist some time in the spotlight rather than a place in a mad science roundup with three other randos. There are exactly two reasons for that: 1) that he was supplied with a name in the very title of the piece and 2) that wretched little outfit that he has assembled for himself. This man was divorced just before he moved to the jungle.

    So after his divorce, the unnamed Jungle Scientist moved out into the middle of nowhere, assembled a terrific look and proceeded to create animate, carnivorous trees “by almost impossible grafting.” The next phase of his plan, that Congo Bill and his pal Professor Kent have shown up just in time to foil, is to implant the brain of his step-daughter into one of the trees. And yes, the step-daughter fits into the divorce narrative I am constructing – she could be the child of a recent (and not very picky) second wife, for example.

    It all ends as you might expect, with the scientist’s special protective perfume getting washed off just before he flees into a grove of man-eating trees. In a way though, isn’t death the ultimate divorce?

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 372: THE GHOST OF TRIGGER DANIELS

    (More Fun Comics 063, 1941)

    Trigger Daniels is a hitman in the employ of gang boss Bugs O’Leary who gets sent up for the murder of a local philanthropist and swears revenge on all who had a part in his fate just before being executed. This is a pretty standard setup to a comic book story and usually involves  lot of faked deaths and/or secret twins and/or scientists with cashflow problems and innovative ideas about brain transplants/ reviving the dead. Trigger Daniels stands out because he represents the first time I have encountered such a person just… coming back as a ghost. I’m sure it’s happened in other comics but I do not recall any examples.

    And he doesn’t just come back as a regular-style ghost either! No, he’s a Spectre- style “earth-bound spirit” with ghost powers sufficient to take out the average human. Golden Age Spectre comics never really flesh out the hows and whys of ghosts so it’s unclear if they all have powers or if Daniels is special somehow. He does have the ability to cloak himself in the “powers of darkness” in order to escape from the Spectre, which might point to some sort of grander evil backing him up, but if it does exist there are no further indications.

    In any case, the “powers of darkness” trick works only once as the second time Daniels tries it the Spectre remembers that he has the Ring of Life, mystical multitool that no ghost should leave home without. Daniels is swiftly banished or destroyed utterly.

    JUDGE AND JURY REVENGE KILLER SCORE: 3/5 –  Trigger Daniels set himself a fairly reasonable target and even managed to get his old gang boss, the prosecutor and the jury foreman but ultimately ran up against the fact that one of his intended victims was Jim “the Spectre” Corrigan and ghost or no ghost that’s a hard task to accomplish.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 372: THE GHOST OF TRIGGER DANIELS

    (More Fun Comics 063, 1941)

    Trigger Daniels is a hitman in the employ of gang boss Bugs O’Leary who gets sent up for the murder of a local philanthropist and swears revenge on all who had a part in his fate just before being executed. This is a pretty standard setup to a comic book story and usually involves  lot of faked deaths and/or secret twins and/or scientists with cashflow problems and innovative ideas about brain transplants/ reviving the dead. Trigger Daniels stands out because he represents the first time I have encountered such a person just… coming back as a ghost. I’m sure it’s happened in other comics but I do not recall any examples.

    And he doesn’t just come back as a regular-style ghost either! No, he’s a Spectre- style “earth-bound spirit” with ghost powers sufficient to take out the average human. Golden Age Spectre comics never really flesh out the hows and whys of ghosts so it’s unclear if they all have powers or if Daniels is special somehow. He does have the ability to cloak himself in the “powers of darkness” in order to escape from the Spectre, which might point to some sort of grander evil backing him up, but if it does exist there are no further indications.

    In any case, the “powers of darkness” trick works only once as the second time Daniels tries it the Spectre remembers that he has the Ring of Life, mystical multitool that no ghost should leave home without. Daniels is swiftly banished or destroyed utterly.

    JUDGE AND JURY REVENGE KILLER SCORE: 3/5 –  Trigger Daniels set himself a fairly reasonable target and even managed to get his old gang boss, the prosecutor and the jury foreman but ultimately ran up against the fact that one of his intended victims was Jim “the Spectre” Corrigan and ghost or no ghost that’s a hard task to accomplish.

  • NOTES – NOVEMBER 2023

    Fate of the Wreck of the Athenia

     

    Showing tremendous respect for the dead, the Blue Tracer uses the wreck of the Athenia as armour while attacking a Nazi battleship. (Military Comics 005, 1941) 

    Honours


    Marine pilots “Loops” McCann and “Banks” Barrows are “decorated for valor” after a barroom brawl in a Shanghai nightclub leads to the destruction of a Japanese spy cell (Military Comics 005, 1941)

    On Crypto-Fascism: 

    As I’ve said before, the US was officially Not Involved in WWII until the December 1941 Pearl Harbor attack and so a lot of pre-1941 comics feature generically Germanish or Japaneseish spies operating on US soil. Military Comics actually features a fair number of actual Nazis (and even some rare comic book appearances by Italian fascists) by having most of its features take place outside of the US. With issue 5 as an example: the Blckhawks battle Nazis in Oslo; the Sniper does the same in Austria; Shot & Shell vex them in a generic Europe; the Death Patrol liberates Nazi POWs as part of the RAF and the Blue Tracer does the same in the Atlantic.

    Loops & Banks, above, are US Marines and as such do not actually battle the Japanese in Shanghai. The most interesting contrast is between Miss America and Yankee Eagle, who both battle Nazi submarines that are preying on US shipping but since the Miss America Nazis are operating out of a New England base and the Yankee Eagle Nazis are based at sea only the latter are actually called Nazis.

    Comics in Comics:

    Inza Cramer meets a fan (More Fun Comics 063, 1941)

    Drawn Without Reference:

    I know that paleontology wasn’t quite as advanced in 1941 as it is today but that is a wild take on what a pterodactyl looked like (More Fun 067, 1941)

    Dynamic Action:

    Check out the dynamic action on adventurer Clip Carson! (More Fun Comics 068, 1941)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 336: ADAM ADDAMS

    (All-Flash 003, 1941)

    Like the Threat before him, Adam Addams is a revenge guy. Unlike the Threat, Addams is… I won’t say more petty, but perhaps less focused – they include the woman who didn’t marry him, the man she married instead, the man who refused to give him a medical license because he talked about glands too much, and anyone who contributed to one of his prior revenge schemes going wrong. If he has a particular focus, it’s Dr French, the man what married the woman. About half of the issue involves attempts by Addams to ruin French’s life and the other half is all about killing as many of his enemies as possible.

    Contrary to Addams’ big talk about changing your face with glandular treatments, he actually uses bog-standard rubberoid masks. Maybe they’re just easier than mutating your head every time you want to put on a disguise, because he does turn out to have the goods, gland-manipulation-wise…

    To whit, he posts up on a tropical island and mutates a herd of horses into beefcake centaurs! Centaurs who he then flies back to NYC and parachutes into Dr French’s hospital for a good old fashioned rampage, because nothing ruins a medical reputation like a centaur attack.

    Special shout out to Oats, the doofus centaur who ruins the whole operation by being too horny.

    Extra special shoutout to the unnamed and very professional centaur pilot in his little hat.

    Aside from Addams’ revenge schemes his other major interest is in recreating the hard water formula that gave the Flash his powers (because the Flash has very poor infosec and it’s trivially easy to find out where and how he did so). To that end, he kidnaps Jay Garrick’s old chemistry professor and forces him to work on finding the formula. And he finds it! Adam Addams acquires Flash-style super-speed! He gets beat up by the actual Flash because he has no fine control yet, but surely this marks a dark new day in the annals of crime!

    Not a chance. In a move that smacks of “we have to wrap up the issue now”, Addams takes his own life after the Flash foils what is frankly a medium-sized plot. It’s fairly unsatisfying, to say the least. Thankfully, I have a solution: Addams didn’t blow up, he entered the Speed Force. He can come back at any time!And I want that! I want him to be brung back! Because as uninteresting as the Speed Force and its related heroes and villains have become through proliferation it can only be improved through the application of a guy who can whip up a pack of centaurs on a month’s notice.

    ADDENDUM: I was wrong! He does change some of his henchmen’s faces via glandular treatments!